[0] https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/collections/object/2007.030.014
> Then around 1976 came “David,” using the Z80 microprocessor, oriented towards team play (the Big Player making the big bets) with hand keyboards operated through holes in pockets and transmitters to signal the Big Player. Later came “Thor,” a computer to track the shuffling (and possible clumping) of multiple decks. One of his inventions involved networking players together with fine wires about 3 feet long. Then there were “Magic Shoes” in which 12 batteries, computer, and all were hidden in “Frankenstein” shoes. Later still there was “Narnia, the sequencing computer.”
The inventor Keith Taft talks about it in more detail in an interview here: https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/gambling-with-an-edge/interv...
(Another famous '70s card counter, Ken Uston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Uston ended up writing one of the very earliest video game guides, Mastering Pac-Man (it came out in 1981, the same year as Tom Hirschfeld's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Master_the_Video_Games .) Apparently one of its readers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Dukach discovered Uston's blackjack books as a result, got into blackjack and so ended up on the later, late-'70s-to-early-2000s MIT Blackjack Team led by J.P. Massar .)
The wide interest in things that Shannon held from weird gadgets to possibly the most famous Masters thesis dissertation, Shannon has me in awe and respect. Had he been a good storyteller, I suspect, people would have been as familiar with his name as Feynman.
Here’s an interview with him from a few years ago.
The Eudaemons were a small group headed by graduate physics students J. Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard at the University of California Santa Cruz in the late 1970s.[1] The group's immediate objective was to find a way to beat roulette using a concealed computer, with the ulterior motive of using the money made from roulette to fund a scientific community. The name of the group was inspired by the eudaimonism philosophy. .... As a science experiment, the group's objective was accomplished: to prove that there was a way of predicting where a ball would fall in a roulette wheel given input data about the timing of the passage of the ball relative to the wheel.
A previous wearable roulette computer had been built and used in a casino by Edward O. Thorp and Claude Shannon in 1960–1961, though it had only been used briefly.[2][3]
Is it just me or does this sounds more like a justification for the cost and/or to discourage reverse engineering? I'm skeptical this is actually necessary.
I suspect they're grabbing a digital input state change interrupt to get some real time processing, if you could get Android to give you access to a timer ISR that would work just as well.
This is bullshit and designed to make their devices more advanced that the outdated junk they really are. I also have doubts they work, because if they did it would be in their best interest to keep quiet and not encourage casinos to deploy countermeasures.
Which "timings" are they talking abt?
Im trying to be charitable...but that desc isnt helping.
There are other countermeasures developed nowadays, such as Cammegh's RRS (Random Rotor Speed): https://www.cammegh.com/our-products/roulette-wheels/mercury... - essentially after bets are closed the wheel is able to ever-so-slightly slow down at random times, throwing off any prior calculation.
I've not spent a lot of time in casinos, but I am surprised that given the technique is apparently widely known, dealers are not more reluctant to accede to player's requests to rotate a card for "luck" or "superstition", or whatever other rhetorical device is used to convince.
It also seems like simply taking care in the production of the cards and their backing design would afford a significant degree of preventative protection too. Sure it might drive the cost of a pack of cards up given the extra precision needed when printing and cutting the cards, but this does not seem beyond the resources of a casino.
I'd love to see footage of how Ivey manipulating the dealer into rotating cards unfolded.
There are "provably fair" schemes where casino reveals a hash of the outcome before players bet.
They explained that some games were rigged but still had to give [big] prizes to someone to keep the show going. Some would organize events and send their big players on trips.
Like an open secret no one talked about. The system is this: For a good while keep depositing more money into the account than spend and leave all the winnings. If they are cheating such account will win incremental amounts. Cheating or not they need to show their players are real people periodically so they organize VIP events and send the top players.
When asked if their winnings were real they examine the poker faces around them for a while until one said that it was irrelevant. I wont cash out either way!